It’s horrifying to think about, but the Pentagon has determined that troop deaths in Iraq could have been prevented with body armor that was already available but not purchased.
A secret Pentagon study has found that as many as 80 percent of the marines who have been killed in Iraq from wounds to the upper body could have survived if they had had extra body armor. Such armor has been available since 2003, but until recently the Pentagon has largely declined to supply it to troops despite calls from the field for additional protection, according to military officials.
The ceramic plates in vests now worn by the majority of troops in Iraq cover only some of the chest and back. In at least 74 of the 93 fatal wounds that were analyzed in the Pentagon study of marines from March 2003 through June 2005, bullets and shrapnel struck the marines’ shoulders, sides or areas of the torso where the plates do not reach.
Thirty-one of the deadly wounds struck the chest or back so close to the plates that simply enlarging the existing shields “would have had the potential to alter the fatal outcome,” according to the study, which was obtained by The New York Times.
Research from the military’s medical examiner led to this conclusion back in June 2005, but did not begin buying additional plates until September.
Indeed, even culling the information has been tragically mishandled.
The Pentagon has been collecting the data on wounds since the beginning of the war in March 2003 in part to determine the effectiveness of body armor. The military’s medical examiner, Dr. Craig T. Mallak, told a military panel in 2003 that the information “screams to be published.” But it would take nearly two years.
The Marine Corps said it asked for the data in August 2004; but it needed to pay the medical examiner $107,000 to have the data analyzed. Marine officials said financing and other delays had resulted in the study’s not starting until December 2004. It finally began receiving the information by June 2005.
It’s literally nauseating.